This invention relates to a system providing a continuous monitoring of organic carbonaceous matter and, more particularly, a system adapted to continuously monitor raw sewage by the separation of organic and inorganic sources of carbonaceous matter and the measurement of carbon dioxide by the use of a gaseous transport which renders the equipment substantially free of clogging by the sewage.
There is growing interest in the protection of the environment from the by products of industry such as the discharge of sewage into a river. Such industrial waste frequently contains polluting matter which must be carefully monitored for proper control of pollutants in a program of environmental protection. One class of pollutants is of organic matter, the concentration of which may be measured by chemical reactions in which the carbon of the organic matter is combined with oxygen in which case the amount of carbon dioxide produced or the amount of oxygen consumed is utilized as a measure of the carbon and, hence, of the concentration of the organic matter. Examples of such processes are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,322,504 which issued in the name of I. A. Capuano on May 30, 1967; U.S. Pat. No. 3,459,938 which issued in the name of V. A. Stenger et al. on Aug. 5, 1969; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,703,355 which issued in the name of Y. Takahashi et al. on Nov. 21, 1972.
The prior art teaches a number of systems for the measurement of carbon and oxygen by the generation of carbon dioxide, the amount thereof being measured with an infrared spectrometer. Some of these prior art systems include combustion chambers adapted for the combusting of measured discrete samples of sewage or other matter which is to be analyzed. Inorganic material is removed in some of these systems by a precipitation procedure.
A problem arises in that precise monitoring of the substances in raw sewage necessitates the use of equipment capable of providing a continuous measurement of the amount of inorganic carbonaceous matter present in the raw sewage. A further problem arises in that the materials of the raw sewage tend to precipitate along the interior surfaces of tubes and chambers of the equipment thereby clogging the equipment and rendering it useless. Such clogging frequently necessitates a staff of support personnel who shutdown the equipment at regular intervals for unclogging the equipment while, in many municipal installations, it would be preferable to operate the installation with little or no staff.